Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Fire This Blog

My million dollar idea.Al Pacino as Phil Spector. I thought of it first! Somebody send me money. I accept PayPal.

Has anybody besides me……noticed a resemblance between Benjamin Netanyahu and Zeppo Marx? (He was the unfunny Marx brother.)

Moses Ma overheating re Twitter, in PSYCHOLOGY TODAY“To me, the twitterverse is like a river of human awareness, composed of billions of tiny 140 character molecules -- each a snapshot of life or a thought or a reflection. A river of pure information that equals energy, according to the laws of quantum thermodynamics and stochastic processes. A river of life flowing by us as we meditate at its bank like some Siddhartha wannabe, in tattered jeans and Oakley sunglasses instead of orchid robes and begging bowl. And now, after long last, we see.”

Or now, after long last, we don’t see. From Good Morning Silicon Valley: underheating re Twitter, and Iran“…[W]hile Twitter's technology makes it particularly difficult to stifle, the fact that it has remained viable also makes it fertile ground for surveillance and disinformation efforts. It's assumed that the government is monitoring the major streams and hashtagged aggregations, so first-hand reporting and mobilization information needs to be tweeted circumspectly there or fractured off into less visible channels. Security personnel are reportedly setting up Twitter accounts and posing as protesters to mislead or entrap. Twitter users outside Iran were urged to complicate government efforts to identify local dissidents by changing their time-zone and location settings to make it appear as if they were in Tehran, which may or may not hobble the authorities but certainly makes it harder for everyone else to distinguish the real front-line sources. Throw in the rumors and conspiracy theories and general noise of various third parties and you're looking at landscape where identity, location, credibility, motivation and agenda are all cast into doubt. Accurate and valuable information will continue to trickle out of Iran through Twitter, but it may take the skills of a CIA analyst to find it in the fog.”

Digital television!Is here! Digital television is now! Thank you Congress for ushering couch spuds everywhere into a sharply defined wonderland of multi-channel crapola. LAW AND ORDER has never looked better!

In case you were wondering….A stochastic process is, roughly, a random process. Its outcome depends upon unpredictable variables. Stochastic processes include war, meteorology, capitalism, and, after long last, Twitter.

All a twitter!At least the blogosphere is, around David Letterman who, earlier in June, made some remarks about Sarah Palin and family that were deemed offensive. In his Top Ten List he deemed Sarah Palin’s clothing style “slutty flight attendant,” and elsewhere on his show made some lame joke about Palin’s daughter getting knocked up by Alex Rodriguez. (I would have described Sarah Palin's attire as more "flirty event planner" myself.)

So now we have firedavidletterman.com. It is run by conservative erstwhile talk show host John Ziegler who, as it happens, is working on a documentary about Sarah Palin. On that site, besides pleas to sign a petition, you will read, “62 Year Old Letterman Violates Common Decency With Sexist Insults of 14 Year Old Girl.” Well, he wasn’t insulting the 14 year old daughter, he was insulting the other one, you know, the one who got knocked up? But never mind… What I want to know is, what is common decency, exactly?

Rush Limbaugh weighed in: “The bottom line here is the joke's inappropriate whether the age of the woman is 14, 18, or 40.” I seem to recall that Rush Limbaugh once made a crack about Chelsea Clinton, when she was 13, calling her the White House dog. I got your common decency right here.

In the meantime….The leaders of Iran appear to have bungled a coup that was probably unnecessary in the first place. Not entirely sure though. Gotta check Twitter.

Finally, in the interests of common decency, this news, sent me by the Wee Wife: Parents Throw Graduation for Ohio High School Students Caught in Cheating Scandal. "The Ceremony They Deserved." (By Meredith Heagney, from the Columbus Dispatch)

All along Main Street, people stopped what they were doing to cheer for the Centerburg High School Class of 2009.

A gas-station worker stepped outside and whooped. A woman dropped a bag of hot dog buns in her front yard and applauded. A few people had made cardboard signs of support: "Way to go class of '09."

Ninety-three graduates in crimson robes and mortarboards filed past and smiled for pictures. They were on their way to Centerburg Community Memorial Park, where hundreds gathered yesterday in folding chairs and on picnic tables for a makeshift graduation ceremony.

On Thursday, the Centerburg school board canceled the traditional ceremony planned for yesterday, citing a cheating scandal that started with a student hacking into the school's computer system and stealing tests. About half the seniors cheated or knew of the cheating and didn't report it, district officials said.

All the students' diplomas except the hacker's were released to their parents, who decided to give their kids what the Knox County district wouldn't.

The sunny ceremony wasn't the formal affair that would've taken place at the high school, but instead a slightly rowdy yet heartfelt imitation of a typical commencement, complete with a recorded version of Pomp and Circumstance.

"I didn't think we were going to have anything," said Leeza Smith, 18, whose eyes were red from crying. "The parents, they really made our day."

Several seniors marveled at the turnout as they took their seats on metal folding chairs atop a concrete platform. Before them, a small wooden stage held silver balloons and a bucket of red roses.

A few feet from them, two TV cameras filmed the event, crowded by little kids in jean shorts who wanted a closer look.

No administrators or staff members took part in the ceremony. Several times throughout, the students were applauded for overcoming the adversity of having had their ceremony canceled.One by one, the graduates were called by name to the front of the stage to receive a rose. They weaved through the crowd to find their parents, who handed them their diplomas.

Carol Andrews couldn't stop squeezing daughter Caitlin. As a mom, she still wished her daughter had had a traditional, more formal, graduation, she said.

But, she added: "I think this is even more memorable. I'm just very proud of the community and the way they came together to give these kids the ceremony they deserved."